burnin’ my feed
yesterday i started to use FeedBurner to track all requests for my feed. this also helps me analyse usage information and has lots of other good stuff.
but if there is one thing i hate, it is giving up control, especially over something i own. so i realised at the very outset that if i was to use feedburner i would not change my feed url (it is still feed:http://www.prash.net/feed ) but instead would redirect my feed to feedburner by messing around with my apache installation - as always, hosting wordpress on one’s own has its rewards (and punishments if you mess up instead of just mess around). thankfully, the whole thing was massively simplified with the help of Steve’s super-cool plugin that was a snap to install and configure. of course you must have access to your .htaccess file (if you have to ask what that is then don’t even bother with this).
on the other hand, if you are willing to give up a little control for some nice advantages, you can change your feed url to a feedburner one and have all your users point to that. my problem (and this guy’s) with this is what would happen sometime in the future if you decide you don’t like feedburner? many of your readers might have the feedburner url and that won’t work if you snip it. (although personally i don’t have the “many readers” problem since i like to keep my readership in the single-digits - yes believe me - it is my decision to keep it that way - no, really!). the good not-so-bad news is that you have a 30 day grace period for a switchback. this post on the feedburner blog explains it all for those who don’t host wordpress on their own (or don’t have access to their .htaccess file for externally hosted accounts).
so go ahead - take the plunge.
March 10th, 2006 at 22:00
[...] not even a day and already the repercussions of using a feed redirector are reverberating through the “i,prash” blogdom. i realised that i had set wordpress to send only summaries in rss, and being the kind of guy who loves to give everyone the full deal, i rapidly changed it to “full text”. [...]
April 19th, 2006 at 12:44
[...] sometime back i wrote about burning my feed using FeedBurner. today techcrunch reports that FeedBurner is back with a brand new blog-to-email service and if ever there was a push for the on-the-fencers to use FeedBurner, i think this is it. There are a lot of people out there who have not made the jump to RSS readers yet. You want to get your content in front of them, and this is another way to do it. [...]
May 18th, 2006 at 16:44
[...] anyone who reads this blog regulary (did i hear a snigger? don’t you dare!) knows that i just love feedburner. [...]